Paula

I’ve been fostering for nearly 7 years now and having been in care myself and having had a positive experience with my foster family, I know how much of an impact fostering can have on a child.

I always knew I wanted to foster however, I wanted my birth children to be old enough to understand and be involved, and now they have become part of our support network.

I have 2 children of my own, and when my youngest was 13 years old we decided to start to our fostering journey.

Our first placement was an unaccompanied minor, and I remember feeling apprehensive, scared and lacking a lot of knowledge of his religion. We had some incredible support from our social worker at the time who helped us through it.

Since then we have worked with a young boy from London who was with us for a year and a half, and a young girl with complex needs. Our current placement is permanent, and we have another which we also hope will be a long term fostering placement. We don’t like to give the children false expectations and make them aware they will remain with us while we are able to meet their needs.

The best thing about fostering has been seeing the changes in the behaviour of the children we’ve looked after, and playing a part in changing their perspective on what they can achieve. B is now trying harder at school and can see his potential. We wanted to show them that they can break the cycle and have a fresh start in life.

As I had experience in care myself I knew roughly what to expect, but the rules and regulations have changed for the better. Foster carers now get much more influence and support from their agencies.

We are fairly new to FosterCare UK as we transferred from another agency, so we are still getting to know the processes and staff. We are optimistic about our future in fostering and hope we can continue for many years to come.